The present invention relates to printed media production and in particular binding pages of printed media into bound documents.
With the advent of the Internet has come the opportunity for the print media industry to publish xe2x80x9con-linexe2x80x9d rather than producing and distributing traditional paper based publications. On-line publishing has a number of advantages. From the consumer""s point of view, information is available on demand, information can be navigated via hypertext links, information can be searched, and information can be automatically personalised. From the publisher""s point of view, the costs of printing and physical distribution are eliminated and the publication becomes more attractive to advertisers as it can be targeted to specific demographics and linked to product sites.
On-line publication also has disadvantages. Computer screens are inferior to paper. At the same quality as a magazine page, a SVGA computer screen displays only about a fifth as much information. Both CRT""s (Cathode Ray Tubes) and LCD""s (Liquid Crystal Displays) have brightness and contrast problems, particularly, when ambient light is strong. Ink on paper, being reflective rather than emissive is both bright and sharp in ambient light. Accordingly, people have a natural preference to read newspapers, magazines, catalogues, brochures and other publications in a bound paper based format.
Known digital printers, and in particular digital inkjet printers, do not make any provision for binding together the pages of printed media. Such an arrangement would conveniently provide for bound document production in the small office/home office (SOHO) environment. This would also permit some of the existing drawbacks of on-line publication to be addressed. However, for this arrangement to be widely adopted it can not be inconveniently slow. Therefore, any provision for binding separate pages into a bound document must not add a significant amount of time to the production of the document.
It is an object of the present invention to provide means to bind pages of printed media into bound documents suitable for use in conjunction with a digital printer. Accordingly, the present invention provides a binding assembly for use with a digital printer having a support frame for mounting a printhead assembly for printing on pages of media, the binding assembly including:
binding means for applying binding material to the pages of the media along a line substantially parallel to a general direction of travel of the media with respect with the support frame.
Preferably, the binding means includes a glue wheel positioned to engage one surface of a printed page as it exits the printhead assembly. In a particularly preferred form the binding means further includes a collection and compression means for aligning each page in a document to be bound and pressing the adhesive coated portion of a page against the adjacent page. In a further preferred form the binding means does not apply adhesive to the first page of a document to be bound and then applies adhesive to the front side of each subsequent page such that the compression means engages the reverse side of each subsequent page and sequentially presses it against the previous page.
It will be appreciated that the binding means according to this embodiment applies the adhesive directly prior to pressing the adhesive against the previous page. This is more effective than applying adhesive to the rear of each page and sequentially pressing each page to the subsequent page because any interruption in the printing process such as replenishing the paper supply may allow the adhesive applied to the last adhered page to deteriorate and become less effective.
In some embodiments of the present invention, the glue wheel is adapted to receive adhesive from an adhesive supply by capillary action. It is preferable if the glue wheel is retained in a chamber that is sealed to provide an environment for substantially maintaining the adhesive performance when the glue wheel is not in use.
In some embodiments, a powered cam shaft is engaged to advance the glue wheel through a closable aperture in the chamber into engagement with the surface of the page. In these embodiments, it is preferable if a flexible pad is positioned opposite the glue wheel to maintain a substantially constant pressure between the page and the glue wheel during the application of adhesive.
In some forms of the invention the printhead is adapted to print the full width of the page simultaneously.
It will be appreciated that by providing a binding assembly that binds the pages along a line parallel to the direction of travel of the page, the binding process can at least be initiated while the printer is printing the page thereby reducing the time required for document production. The present invention also allows the production of printed material in the traditionally appealing form of a bound document rather than separate pages. With the aid of modem printers and computer network technology, the invention has many applications in on-line publication of newspapers, magazines, brochures and so on. The present invention will be described with particular reference to the netpage system. An overview of this system is set out below. It has been developed to allow a large number of distributed users to interact with networked information via printed matter and optical sensors thereby to obtain interactive printed matter on demand from high-speed networked color printers.
For this purpose, the Applicant has developed a range of netpage printers. Of these, the wallprinter is designed to be wall mounted in the area where the user would normally first consume the morning news such as in the kitchen or beside the breakfast table. In light of this, it is expected that the wallprinter will be one of the most widely used of the netpage printers and therefore it will be described in detail below to illustrate one specific embodiment of the invention. However, it will be appreciated that this is merely one example of the invention, which may be embodied in many other forms.